Americans are doing less DIY. It's another worrying sign for the economy

You go to sell the house and the buyer demands to see all your permits? The city inspector barges into your house uninvited?

Unless you're in a total buyer's market, you just sell to someone who isn't so nitpicky. Or you get a pro to inspect your work and attest that it's up to code (it would be, wouldn't it?)

A pretty remote If. If you're that worried about doing it wrong, then by all means hire an electrician.

The poster had men on their mind, and that is fine. This isn't a presidential address where every word will have reverberating cultural impact — it's a comment deep in a thread on HN.

And you understood the core message, so it served its purpose.

There are also things to be said about how men used to connect over DIY — there was a time a few generations back where men used to build each others' houses and cars. But my key point is that nitpicking stops conversations and ideas, let's not do that.

Except, your reductionist take on men and women aside for the moment, it does matter in the context of the OP. Men, who exist and have specific needs, have a social need for friendship together that once was met in part by DIY but increasingly that isn’t happening or even possible and that is a loss for men and male mental health. Returning to your “balls and breasts” reductionism which I suspect is the true source of our disagreement, besides all other nuance most people including myself and presumably the OP accept the modest thesis that men and women have distinct needs in terms of mental health. Male mental health has been ignored and neglected for decades and this specific topic is a structural net loss for male mental health.

So many safety systems and so much of "code" is stuff that most DIYers don't understand and they just get away with it. Until they don't. Until their kitchen catches fire because they've overloaded a feed or they've had a fatal shock in their shed because it's too far from the house to have tripped in time. People who trusted "IP66" certification on the crap they're getting off Amazon and Ali. DIYers lack real knowledge, real experience.

Some of the most dangerous work you'll ever see comes from people who are handy with tools, thought they knew enough, but didn't. Of course there are "professionals" who deliver poor work too and when they do that, you can lean on their insurance, their certifying body (eg NICEIC in the UK) and get it fixed.

Stick to stuff that doesn't need the work to be inspected to code/regs, unless you're having a pro check and certify your work.

This isn't true. Avoid hyperbole when describing your laws.

You can change fittings, switches, lights, like-for-like. You may even be able to extend a circuit. And anything that would require certification you can do but you cannot self-certify, so you have to pay a qualified electrician to check your work. As you have done.

I won't disagree that even professionals can be lazy or incompetent but if they mess up, it's their insurance, their career on the line. If you did uncertified work on your home and it burned down yours and your neighbours' houses, who do you think the insurance companies are going after?

Personally I'd be capable, but the vast majority of people aren't.